With increasing digitalization of information, the demand for durable and reliable archival data storage services is also increasing. Archival data may include archive records, backup files, media files and the like maintained by governments, businesses, libraries and the like. The archival storage of data has presented some challenges. For example, the potentially massive amount of data to be stored can cause costs to be prohibitive using many conventional technologies. Also, it is often desired that the durability and reliability of storage for archival data be relatively high, which further increases the amount of resources needed to store data, thereby increasing the expense. Conventional technologies such as magnetic tapes have traditionally been used in data backup systems because of the low cost. However, tape-based and other storage systems often fail to fully exploit advances in storage technology, such as data compression, error correction and the like, that enhance the security, reliability and scalability of data storage systems.